Geosynchron

by David Louis Edelman

  Natch tries to recall Papizon's instructions on how to use some of the more arcane weaponry in his utility belt. The flamethrower, the pulse grenade, the smoke pellets. But he knows that despite the thorough grounding Papizon gave him in the basics, this is not something that he can learn at the last minute. Soldiers train for months with these weapons until the controls are embedded in muscle memory, until the weapon becomes an extension of the human being. Such familiarity can be imitated with bio/logics, but never entirely duplicated.

  The entrepreneur shrugs to himself. All he really needs to worry about is pointing the barrel of his dartgun and pulling the trigger. It will not be knowledge and skill with advanced weaponry that determines the outcome of this fight. No, this fight will depend on willpower, resolve, and MultiReal-not to mention the black code that Horvil, Quell, and Frederic put together.

  Natch crouches down, dartgun in his hand, finger primed on the trigger, and edges into the room. The doors shut behind him.

  "Gone," said Petrucio.

  "Gone?" Jara gaped at the programmer as if he had told her the Kordez Thassel Complex had just been overrun by gnomes. "What do you mean, gone? Where did the feed go?" She stood up and walked over to the viewscreen that had been showing images from the twenty four cameras embedded in Natch's battle suit. Now it showed nothing but dull, undifferentiated gray, not so different from the view in the supply closet.

  You sense that too, Jara? said Jorge Monck.

  The fiefcorp master flipped one of the viewscreens to the Council operative's point of view and saw nothing but sparsely populated hallway. Yeah. Everything okay down there?

  As far as I know. Natch just followed the target into that room behind the double doors.

  Jara stretched her mind out to the war room's systems, trying to ascertain what had happened to the cameras. In her peripheral vision, she could see Merri and Benyamin fiddling with holographic displays in an attempt to do the same thing.

  "I'll go find Larakolia," said Robby, hopping up and dashing out into the hallway.

  The Defense and Wellness Council tactician was only down the hall. Less than twenty seconds later, she was standing in the center of the war room giving a taciturn frown to the table. "EMP," she muttered.

  "EMP?" said Robby Robby. "What's that?"

  "Electromagnetic pulse," said Petrucio from his seat across from Jara. "Ancient technology, almost as old as radar. Disables electronics."

  "Ordinarily it's not something you worry about on the battlefield," said Larakolia, arms folded across her chest, disappointed at having failed to anticipate something. "The cameras you use out there are attached directly to the optic nerve and shielded from electromagnetic force. But when you're using cameras embedded in the mesh of a powered suit ..."

  Benyamin slapped his forehead, hard. "Krone knew we were coming, didn't he?"

  The room fell silent, which was an answer in and of itself.

  Natch wades through a copse of trees until he finds a clearing at the top of a hill. The surrounding foliage serves as both curtain and boundary. There is a large tree stump poking incongruously from the center of the clearing like a splinter in the Earth. The smell of burning camphor lingers in the air.

  He knows this place. In the flesh, he only spent a few scant moments here, and they were panicked moments that attenuated the senses and distorted mental geography. But of all the places Natch has been in his lifetime, this may be the one he can never forget.

  "You're not looking in the right direction," says a voice, unruffled, unhurried.

  Brone parts the curtain of greenery with his artificial hand and steps into the clearing. He's wearing the same black robe with stylized red trim that Natch has seen on the other Thasselians. Like, but not identical to, the robes they wore when they ambushed him in Shenandoah. Brone's hands are folded behind his back, and he's carrying no weapon that Natch can see.

  "It was over there," says the bodhisattva, nodding towards the center of the clearing. "The bear batted me over that stump with one of his paws-he hit me right here." Brone raises his good hand and makes a gesture, indicating the scar that still flares angrily across his face, bisecting the prosthetic eye. "I fell back and raised one arm to keep the bear off my face, and he twisted it. All the way around. I can't explain exactly how it happened. One minute I had an arm, the next minute ..." He stares dolefully at the ground, as if the severed limb might be lying there in the SeeNaRee. "But you remember all that, don't you, Natch? Because you were standing right there." Brone points towards one of half a dozen maples lining the far side of the clearing. "I looked over and caught your eye, do you remember? And what did you do? You just stared at me and watched."

  The screams, the terror, the pain assault Natch's mind. For once, he wishes that MultiReal-D had taken one of his memories away. "I'll never understand you," he says, shaking his head. "You knew I was coming. You've been waiting for me. So why didn't you have a dartgun ready? Why didn't you just kill me when I walked in the room?"

  Brone seems to find the question mildly amusing. "I've had the opportunity to kill you, Natch. Many times. And I'm not talking about our little confrontation in Old Chicago. I followed you around Shenandoah for months, remember? I knew exactly where to find you and exactly where to attack you. I could very well have made the black code in those darts lethal."

  "Well? Why didn't you?"

  "Certainly you know the reason. I needed you on my side. I needed your help in finishing the MultiReal programming. I foolishly thought I could persuade you to join my Revolution of Selfishness. I thought you would gladly help me rid the world of the Defense and Wellness Council's tyranny." With hands clasped behind his back, Brone begins a leisurely pace clockwise around the tree stump. Natch, wary, circles around it too, keeping the stump between them. "I guess I underestimated Magan Kai Lee's powers of persuasion. After all the Council did to you, you'd risk putting the ultimate weapon in their hands?" Natch starts to speak, but Brone cuts him off with a dismissive snort. "No, stop, Natch-I already know what you're going to say. Magan isn't the tyrant you think he is. He's not like Borda. Let me guess.... He told you that he intends to keep MultiReal safe and out of the hands of his armies. He said he would work with you on a plan to get the program out on the open market. A slow plan that'll take twenty years, I'll wager. Do you really believe him?"

  Natch continues circling around the tree stump, dartgun raised, finger on the trigger. He says nothing.

  "Didn't you listen to the speech that Serr Vigal gave to the Prime Committee?" says Brone, irked at his enemy's silence. "In the end, it doesn't matter whether you believe Magan or not. It doesn't matter whether he's being sincere. Power has intense gravity, that's what Lucco Primo said. Concentrate the power of MultiReal in the hands of the few, and you will get corruption. That's true whether we're talking about Len Borda, Magan Kai Lee, or Khann Frejohr-or you and I, for that matter.

  "Even if the lieutenant executive manages to crush Borda's armies, you know that he won't keep his promises. As soon as Borda has shuffled off to the Prepared and the central government has made peace with the unconnectibles, things are going to look different. High Executive Lee's going to wonder why he made an agreement with a crooked businessman like you in the first place. The years will pass, and MultiReal will never make it into the open market. You'll see.

  "And even if Magan Kai Lee remains true to his word to the end of his days ... do you trust his subordinates? Do you trust Rey Gonerev? Do you trust that shifty chief engineer of his? I'm not sure they'll wait for Magan to die. What happens when one of them gets a notion to put a dart in the back of the high executive's head? What happens when one of them decides to revive the glory days of the Council?

  "I'm sorry, Natch. I know how that story ends. We've only got one chance to make this right. MultiReal needs to be bequeathed to the entire world. Immediately. Irreversibly. It may be painful, but it needs to be done."

  They stand and glare at one another at the top of the hi
ll. Natch rubs his finger up and down the trigger of his weapon; Brone flexes his own fingers like a prestidigitator preparing to cast an exceedingly complicated spell.

  "You never answered my question," says Natch. "You knew I was coming. Why didn't you have a trap prepared for me?"

  Brone laughs quietly, humorlessly. "You know the answer to that, Natch. I'll get no satisfaction out of shooting you in the back. I've been waiting for this opportunity since the Shortest Initiation. To confront you, face-to-face. To pit my will against yours." He shakes his head. "I already know how this is going to end. I fight for the freedom of humanity. I fight for the noblest cause there is. Who do you fight for?"

  Natch thinks for a moment. "Rodrigo," he says.

  It begins.

  Natch grips the dartgun and takes aim at his old enemy, the bodhisattva of Creed Thassel. He thumbs the selector on the side of the pommel just as Jorge Monck instructed him to do and swivels the barrel slightly so it aims directly at Brone's torso. Click. The trigger is pulled, the dart is fired. Brone's eyes widen slightly as the dart hits home. He clutches feebly at his chest and slumps to the floor.

  Flash.

  Brone has never been trained in the martial arts as far as Natch knows. And yet as he pirouettes into the air with arms and legs whirling, his movements are precise and calculated. Natch makes a feeble effort at warding off the confluence of limbs, but he's unable. A foot comes rocketing towards Natch's face, meets the bridge of his nose, crunches bone. There's the briefest flare of agony as shards of bone slice into Natch's brain. Then blackness.

  Flash.

  Natch looks at the blade folded inside his utility belt. A thought is all it takes to transfer the poisoned OCHREs on the tips of his black code darts into the blade's receptors and onto its serrated edge. The look on Brone's face is pure surprise as Natch draws the knife and slashes it across the bodhisattva's chest. A line of crimson appears on his robe as he collapses to the ground, clawing at the wound in agony.

  Flash.

  Natch fires the dartgun, but Brone ducks and the dart misses, spearing his left shoulder by centimeters. He tucks and rolls athletically under the next two darts and springs to his feet right in front of Natch. Brone uses his artificial hand to retract the cover of Natch's utility belt, then grabs the miniature flamethrower. There's barely enough time for Natch to flinch as the bodhisattva holds the flamethrower at eye level and pulls the trigger. A sudden scorching heat, then void.

  Flash.

  Brone is expecting Natch to fire his weapon, but he leaps forward and catches his enemy in a chokehold instead, taking the bodhisattva by surprise. Brone's legs go kicking in the air as Natch squeezes his windpipe. For a good minute and a half, there is no sound in the room but the hoarse accordion wheeze of lungs struggling for oxygen. Finally, Brone falls facefirst onto the floor. Natch calmly reaches down, grabs the dartgun, and fires a dart into the chest of his unconscious enemy.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Brone and Natch stand in the clearing and stare at one another. No one moves.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Natch can see the possibilities, numerous as leaves, grains of rice, stars. They extend to the ends of the universe in every direction. Every direction: not just north, south, east, and west, but all degrees on the circle, all points on the sphere. Branching out from each point is another set of possibilities, just as infinite, and then another, and then another. For the briefest instance here in the purgatory of mental stopgap, the possibilities are the universe. There is nothing but Everything, every conceivable response and nonresponse, the sum total of human imagination laid out on virtual latticework.

  And Brone is traversing that latticework, stopping at nodes with strange and improbable realities in the hopes that their peculiarity might cause Natch to make a mistake.

  Brone bursts into song.

  Brone howls like a monkey and begins scaling a tree.

  Brone falls onto the ground and writhes like a seizure victim.

  Brone grabs Natch's blade and begins carving bloody lines in his own palms.

  Brone kneels down and begins gnawing on the tree stump.

  Flash.

  Natch can feel the MultiReal exhaustion beginning to take hold of him. It takes all of his willpower to resist the temptation to lie down, to stop fighting. His limbs are starting to quiver and his knees are knocking. Sweat is pouring down his forehead, and his OCHREs are thrumming crazily to keep his heart from accelerating out of control. He can't stop now. He can't.

  Flash.

  The bodhisattva doesn't see a kick or a punch or a feint in the next node of the MultiReal latticework. Instead he sees the future of the human race avalanching down as a consequence of his victory over Natch. Suddenly he is no longer in a SeeNaRee clearing in the Kordez Thassel Complex; he's standing in a mass of ruins the severity of which dwarfs those of Old Chicago. Uprooted buildings. Smoldering husks of hoverbirds and tube trains lying atop twisted skeletons that once propped up human beings. Survivors wander and shuffle through the wreckage; the diss for a new age. But it is not a future of complete despair, for around them the survivors can see traces of the Lunar tycoons, secure in hermetically sealed compounds and raptured into a universe of eternal, limitless possibilities. A universe where cause and effect are untangled and reentwined willy-nilly for the delectation of the few, a universe where the suffering of the many is drowned out and overwhelmed by the joy of the economically privileged.

  Flash.

  Natch stands and watches as figures in white robes and yellow stars strut through the streets, unafraid, dartrifles on brazen display. For who would dare assault an officer of the Defense and Wellness Council armed with the power of MultiReal? From the streets of Shenandoah to the exurbs of Beijing to the halls of Patronell, it's all the same. Docile citizens shuffling along, getting by, going through the motions of their lives from birth to death. The unpredictable vacillations of political unrest and dissent have been ground down to smooth, regulated lines. Drudges no longer struggle among themselves to dig up truth so much as they struggle to flatter the high executive, to praise his wisdom and forethought. Crime has surprisingly not gone downit's on the rise, due to the corruption of the authorities and their disinterest in policing the petty crimes of the masses.

  Flash.

  You'll cause immeasurable death and destruction. It could be as devastating as the Autonomous Revolt.

  The Council's estimation. You trust the words of a tyrant?

  You've known me since I was a boy. I don't cave to pressure. I don't bow to tyrants. But if they offer me the truth, then I'll listen.

  Do you think I want death? Do you think I want destruction? Of course I don't. I wouldn't take this path unless there was no other choice. This may be humanity's last hope for a thousand years or more.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Choice cycle against choice cycle against choice cycle against choice cycle.

  Hundreds, thousands.

  Surely the world must be crumbling down all around them by now; surely the computational infrastructure must be buckling, near to collapse. It feels like Natch has been here for hours, for days, for weeks. He can feel his own bio/logic systems cracking under the strain.

  Perhaps the Natch who lusted for number one on Primo's could have clashed wills with Brone and come out victorious. Maybe the Natch who sat in the center of his own universe and saw nothing but himself could have triumphed. But he has been through too much in the past few months. He has seen a universe outside of himself, a universe that is vast beyond imagination, and chimerical and stubborn and resurgent. One man can't shoulder the burden of all that and live. Natch has seen his own death, not once but tens of thousands of times; he has experienced it over and over and over. He has climbed from the lowest depths to the highest pinnacle and then watched himself tumble back down again.

  Natch feels hi
s grip on the MultiReal interface slipping. He feels his will weakening. He can't compete against Brone's narrow monomania. Brone senses impending victory and redoubles his efforts.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Brone leaps forward with his prosthetic arm pulled back for the killing blow. Natch tries to muster the energy to resist this one last time, fails. A blade extends from the palm of the bodhisattva's mechanical hand. The entrepreneur stares as the knife stabs through the air to spear his forehead. Half a second until death-

  Flash.

  MultiReal-D. Natch silently thanks Papizon for finding him a bio/logic workbench back in Manila. He thanks Petrucio Patel for the instructions to turn the code back on.

  The bodhisattva and the entrepreneur are standing in the clearing. Brone leaps forward, extends knife, goes for the kill.

  Flash.

  Clearing. Leap, knife, kill.

  Flash.

  Over and over and over.

  Until-

  The Null Current.

  The nothingness at the center of the universe.

  No way forward.

  Flash.

  The SeeNaRee vanishes, leaving Natch standing on a stage next to a purple curtain. The curtain parts, and Natch catches a brief glimpse of faces watching. There's a collective gasp as Natch lets his dartgun go clattering to the floor.

  Brone reaches very calmly into the right-hand pocket of his black robe and withdraws a syringe. He's not going for the kill this time; MultiReal-D stays silent. Natch watches helplessly as the bodhisattva bridges the few steps between them. Then he stabs the syringe into the entrepreneur's arm with a slow and deliberate motion. Brone presses down on the plunger and sends Natch clawing, shrieking into nothingness.

  36

  Magan Kai Lee sat in the office at the base of DWCR's observation tower-his office, his observation tower now-and anxiously consulted the time. Borda's invading force at the Twin Cities had laid down their arms on hearing the news of the high executive's surrender. Natch's mission remained the only loose end to tie up.